Individual Rights Quotes - Page 5

• If succeeding generations of Americans don't understand the concepts of justice, individual rights, free enterprise, capitalism, sovereignty or national security, there can be no guarantee that those concepts - or others like them - will continue.

  George Nethercutt

  Guarantees That, Rights, Justice

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• We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Character, Ideas, Two

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• The United States presents a value system to the world that is based on democracy, based on economic freedom, based on individual rights for men and women, .. I think that is what makes us such a draw for nations around the world. People come to the United States to be educated, to become Americans. We are a country of countries and we touch every country, and every country in world touches us.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Men, Thinking

  "Powell participates in MTV global forum" by Andrea Koppel and Elise Labott, www.cnn.com. February 15, 2002.

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• One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!

  Hjalmar Schacht

  War, Mean, Russia

  "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately, 2004.

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• If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.

  Julian Assange

  Writing, Thinking, Rights

  "Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) - IP Chapter". wikileaks.org. November 13, 2013.

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• Obviously, the state's responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Responsibility, Bedroom, Prohibition

  "The Globe and Mail" Newspaper, (p. 61), December 12, 1967.

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• To speak his thoughts is every freeman's right, in peace and war, in council and in fight.

  Homer

  Peace, War, Fighting

  Homer, W. C. Armstrong (1851). “Translation of the Iliad of Homer”, p.267

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• It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.

  Tertullian

  Nature, Men, Religion

  Tertullian (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian (Annotated Edition)”, p.247, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula "I am we"; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an "individual," existing apart from his group.

  Erich Fromm

  Responsibility, Independence, Identity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.61, Routledge

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• Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Agreement, Individual Choice

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.385, Penguin

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• Striking a balance in favor of individual rights has always been the right decision for us and that it remains so even when technology gives us new ways to exercise those rights. Individual liberty has never weakened us; freedom of speech, enhanced by the Net, will only make us stronger.

  Mike Godwin

  Exercise, Technology, Rights

  Mike Godwin (1998). “Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age”, Crown Business

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• Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Party, Communication

  Paul Kurtz (1983). “In defense of secular humanism”, Prometheus Books

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• A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.

  Matthew Woodring Stover

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Rights, Civilization

  Matthew Woodring Stover (2008). “Blade of Tyshalle”, p.102, Del Rey

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• Still - and for all Obama's heavy hinting to the contrary - Islam has no "human rights." The ideas of individual rights and the dignity of man are distinctly Western, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. And while dialogue is dignified; dhimmitude is not, even if it achieves a desired, if temporary, effect.

  Ilana Mercer

  Men, Rights, Ideas

  "B. Hussein in History Wonderland" by Ilana Mercer, www.ilanamercer.com. August 21, 2009.

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• Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of an impossible - and incidentally of a highly undesirable - social revolution which, in destroying individual rights - including property rights - and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in the advance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advance or the preservation of mankind is worthwhile.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Rights, Two, Agents

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “African and European Addresses”, p.182, tredition

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• The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

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• We need to insist on fathers and mothers sharing the care of their offspring as well as the opportunity to enjoy the fulfillment of individual rights.

  Mary Frances Berry

  Mother, Father, Opportunity

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• The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.

  Thomas I. Emerson

  Religion, Democracy, Principles

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• Freedom of conscience is a natural right, both antecedent and superior to all human laws and institutions whatever; a right which laws never gave and a right which laws can never take away.

  John Goodwin

  Responsibility, Law, Justice

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• Theres something unique about the United States, a sense of individual rights and freedoms, and a sense of social and civic responsibility that we contributed to so much of the world. We lost that mission in the 1980s and 1990s, when we entered a gilded age, and the culture of individualism became a culture of avarice.

  George Hickenlooper

  Responsibility, Unique, Rights

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• One of the interesting things about the ancient Greeks is that they really didn't have our conception of individual rights. They didn't have our conception of all lives matters. And it was really was true for them, that certain lives matter a lot more than others. It didn't dawn on them that all lives, although different, can be lives of equal mattering. And that is actually something a huge ethical lesson.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Rights, Interesting, Greek

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

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• All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the guarantees [of the First Amendment].

  William J. Brennan

  Ideas, Justice, Religion

  Roth v. United States (1957)

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• The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less that the right to speak out or the right to travel is, in truth, a "personal" right.

  Potter Stewart

  Truth, Speaks Out, Law

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• In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

  Dick Durbin

  Taken, Rights, President

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• My own sense as an American is that we have begun to experience the disadvantages of framing virtually all moral issues in terms of individual rights. American history has consisted of swings back and forth between rights talk on the one hand and talk of duties, responsibilities, and the common good on the other hand. Recent decades have seen a big swing toward rights, and conceived in very individualistic terms, which hasn't always been the case even with rights.

  David Wong

  Responsibility, Moral, Common

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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